The police and judicial officials knew what was going on, and did nothing
It sometimes seems that there is little left to say about prisons and the system of detention in Brazil that still has the capacity to shock.
Even so, the report that a young woman, possibly as young as 15, was left to share a cell in a police station with around 20 men and is said to have been repeatedly sexually abused, does stand out for its sheer horror.
The fact that police officers involved then started to dispute her age, as if it mattered whether she was 15 or 20, does say something about the inability to grasp the scale of what had been done.
The girl does not appear to have been helped by the involvement in the case of women officials at various levels.
According to Brazilian media reports the officer in charge of the station where the case was processed was a woman, who has since been suspended, while a woman judge who dealt with the case did not authorise a transfer.
The governor of the state of Para, where the incident happened, is also a woman.
TIMELINE
21 Oct: Police arrest girl for allegedly stealing and send her to a cell in a police station in Abaetetuba
5 Nov: Police chief asks for transfer to women's prison in city of Belem
14 Nov: Official responsible for child welfare discovers girl. She is taken to a room from where she escapes
16 Nov: Girl is found and sent to centre for young offenders in Belem
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo
"I am shocked and angry," Governor Ana Julia Carepa told the Brazilian media.
"My political life was always dedicated to the defence of human rights and it would not be different in my administration."
As an effort continues to shift blame for what happened, the civil police of Para say that the judicial officials knew that the girl was being held with a large number of male prisoners.
They have produced a document which suggests a request was made to transfer the girl to a centre for young offenders on 7 November, at least a week before she was discovered by an official responsible for child welfare.
The discovery was only made after an anonymous tip-off.
The document - presented to the judge - requested the urgent transfer of the young woman to a detention centre for women, and said that she ran the risk of "any type of violence".
The police request for a transfer was only made after the girl had been in custody for 15 days, and in total she was held for 26 days, according to the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
Welfare officials say the girl reported that she had suffered sexual abuse from about 20 prisoners and had to offer sex in return for food. She also showed marks of cigarette burns on her body.
Cell deficit
Brazilian prisons have long had a reputation for violence, appalling conditions and overcrowding.
Criminals using mobile phones in their cells are even able to directly organise crimes outside.
In August, 25 prisoners died after fellow inmates set fire to mattresses in a cell in a jail in the state of Minas Gerais.
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The most notorious case in recent Brazilian history happened in 1992 following a riot in Carandiru jail in Sao Paulo when 111 prisoners were killed, the vast majority shot by military police.
In 2002 alone, 303 inmates were murdered by other prisoners.
A preliminary report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture, released on Friday, makes a grim analysis of the state of Brazilian prisons.
It speaks of endemic overcrowding, filthy conditions and pervasive violence, as well as torture "meted out on a widespread and systematic basis".
Part of the problem is that Brazil does not have a federal prison system and all prisons are run by the 27 different systems, although they are governed by a single penal law.
Between 1995 and 2003, the number of prisoners in the system more than doubled, from 148,760 to 308,304 men and women.
More than 100,000 new prison spaces were created but the country still has a huge deficit.
In recent years as many as 25% of prisoners have been held in police cells due to shortage of space, even though this is illegal. In some states the figure is even higher.
While the number of women in Brazilian jails is in line with other countries, it is clear that the level of overcrowding and violence means they can be extremely vulnerable.
Tim Cahill, Amnesty International's researcher on Brazil, said the organisation received extensive reports of women in detention who suffered sexual abuse, torture, substandard healthcare and inhuman conditions, showing that this case is far from isolated.
"Even though women in Brazil make up a small percentage of the overall prison population, their numbers in detention are rising," he said.
"There is a desperate need for the government to address their needs, which are rarely, if ever, met."
The security secretary for the state of Para, Vera Talvares, told Folha de Sao Paulo that any type of violation of a woman's rights was a violation of human rights and should receive exemplary punishment.
If that resolve leads to a change in policy in Para, and in other parts of Brazil, it would at least be something, but past events do not leave much room for optimism.
In top of all the unfortunately usual problems with the penal system around here, there is also the particular incompetent government run by that moron of Ana Carepa. On today's edition of Folha de S. Paulo, she states that "is common for some time" women being put on men's prison in Pará. Then she continues saying that "it was good that to come public, so the civil society can do something about it". Huh? She is the fucking governor of the state, and she knew. Where was that much indignation about the situation before the thing got international proportions?
Sea Skimmer wrote:Go buy City of God, a truly great movie, and watch it and the documentary on Brazilian crime that comes with it.
Keep an eye for an end of January release in the US of the Brazilian film Elite Force (or something similar titled, I'm not sure how it will be titled there). A bit wanked here and there, but nevertheless a good film regarding the theme, about the daily operations of a special operation forces of Rio de Janeiro police, and a more realistic portrait of the criminals in Rio. It's the kind of film that managed to be liked by both sides of the debate -- those who believed that the methods showed by the police are right, and by those who believe that those methods are a strong violation of human rights.
Some says I offend people. It's a mistake. I treat them as adults. I criticize. Something so uncommon in our press that people thinks it's offensive. -- Paulo Francis
When the first charlatan found the first moron, there was born the first god. -- Millor Fernandes
Darth Wong wrote:Question: if it was a young man being gang-raped instead of a young woman, would we react differently? After all, we joke about prison rape all the time.
My sympathy meter would be pegged at roughly the same spot, considering the circumstances (arrested for theft), however, yes, my pissed-off-at-incompetent/malicious-guards meter would be a bit lower - in this case, beyond the usual failures at rape prevention they actually increased the chances of rape by putting someone who is sexually attractive to essentially the whole group in the cell in it, as opposed to the young man scenario where, in all likelyhood, there would be a minority that find him sexually attractive (especially since this is apparently a pre-trial detention, and not an actual prison for convicts). The (unrealistic) equivalent would be putting the boy into a cell with an equivalent number of certified homosexual arrestees. Which is one damn good reason why prisons are segregated - and a failure to recognize that does, admittedly, up my reaction towards the officials.
How can this happen in any remotely civilized country? I could understand this sort of news coming from somewhere like Saudi Arabia with its delightful judicial mindset (see the article about the rape victim getting lashed) or a similarly fucked up place with regards to basic human rights, but fucking Brazil? I know it ain't exactly Scandinavia when it comes to it, but I'm honestly surprised.
Brazil is a Latin American Third World country. Little different from most of Lat America - poverty and corruption, and a great deal of fucked up things.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Flagg wrote:What makes you think it was a bureacratic fuckup?
Yeah really. This and the girl being held with 70(!) men is so blatantly wrong it cannot possibly be "by mistake". More likely a case of the prisoners being unruly and rioting, so police go a snag a girl from a poor family (that noone'll care about) and give her to them so they can rape and fuck their aggression away.
Flagg wrote:What makes you think it was a bureacratic fuckup?
Yeah really. This and the girl being held with 70(!) men is so blatantly wrong it cannot possibly be "by mistake". More likely a case of the prisoners being unruly and rioting, so police go a snag a girl from a poor family (that noone'll care about) and give her to them so they can rape and fuck their aggression away.
I would be more inclined to suspect she was an actual robbery suspect, and was simply randomly selected as being poor, Indianos, and thus subhuman, and most of all, available, and tossed in with the men to prevent them from continuing some sort of riot or fighting which is very common in Brazilian prisons. But yes, I agree that it was intentional, and the goal was pacifying the prisoners.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
Sidewinder wrote:I'm thinking, WTF?! Aren't jail cells segregated by gender, i.e., the men and women are kept in different cells?
Heads better roll for the bureaucratic fuckup that made the girl a rape victim.
What makes you think it was a bureacratic fuckup?
I made the post before I read this:
Julhelm wrote:
Addendum:
What I mean by that last statement is that since people of native descent are often treated as untermench in various south american countries, it could be that the cops collect cash from the inmates in exchange for "good times", and they then go arrest a random girl. Especially considering both cases took part in the same state and for the same time.
Perhaps I was being too damn optimistic, or naive, in hoping this incident was the result of an accident instead of the outright crime that Julhelm suggested.
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Darth Wong wrote:Question: if it was a young man being gang-raped instead of a young woman, would we react differently? After all, we joke about prison rape all the time.
My sympathy meter would be pegged at roughly the same spot, considering the circumstances (arrested for theft), however, yes, my pissed-off-at-incompetent/malicious-guards meter would be a bit lower - in this case, beyond the usual failures at rape prevention they actually increased the chances of rape by putting someone who is sexually attractive to essentially the whole group in the cell in it, as opposed to the young man scenario where, in all likelyhood, there would be a minority that find him sexually attractive (especially since this is apparently a pre-trial detention, and not an actual prison for convicts). The (unrealistic) equivalent would be putting the boy into a cell with an equivalent number of certified homosexual arrestees. Which is one damn good reason why prisons are segregated - and a failure to recognize that does, admittedly, up my reaction towards the officials.
In other words, while rape in one situation is a possibility, which is more likely than not unforseeable, it was pretty much a given in this case.
Not an armored Jigglypuff
"I salute your genetic superiority, now Get off my planet!!" -- Adam Stiener, 1st Somerset Strikers
